Page 89 of Master of Storms
Solveig braced herself and then started the long return.
Slipping down the stone stairs, she stared at Marduk defiantly. “I thought you would be eating and drinking and dancing merrily. What are you doing here?”
“I upset you,” he said, staring at her with his hands in his pockets. “But I’m not entirely certain how.”
“It was nothing.”
Marduk moved to intercept her. “Don’t do that. Please. Is that not how you spent ten years hating me?”
How to tell him that she feared her feelings for him were stronger than she’d ever let herself believe?
Simple.
She didn’t.
“I don’t like your jealousy.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were. You’ve had your hands all over me all evening.” She cut him off before he could retort. “And if it was because you couldn’t keep your hands off me, it wouldn’t have started in the Great Hall. You don’t like it when he watches me.”
A muscle leapt in his jaw and he looked away. “Do you… wish to encourage his advances?”
“Draco’s?”
“Yes,” he growled out, his jaw clenching and then unclenching. “He is king of his clan. Ruthless. Charming—”
“Ridiculously handsome,” she suggested, because she wasn’t entirely above taunting him.
Marduk gave her a flat stare.
“If a handsome face could charm my heart, I’d have fallen head over heels for you ten years ago. I desire more than a pretty face in a mate.”
There was no response.
But she could feel the fire raging within him and see him fight against it with everything he had. Finally, he said, “If you truly wished to make an alliance with him, I would not stand in your way. I would… I could sunder this agreement between us here and now.”
The words stole her breath.
Itcouldbe advantageous for her clan.
TheZilittuwere strong and ruthless, a constant threat to the north. In a single moment she would silence such a threat and bind it to her court with chains of iron.
No, shrieked the creature inside her, the one that tore and ravaged at her heart with violent claws.No. It would be a cage. It wouldbe wrong in all the ways that mattered.
And she would never escape the feeling that she had chosen the wrong course.
But what was the right course?
“You would do that? I thought we were to present an allied front? I thought I was ‘yours.’ You made a great display of it last night.”
He’d been making a very good display of it tonight too.
There was something in his eyes that she couldn’t read. “Politically, my brother would remind me this idea is a nightmare for theZini.”
“Then why would you make such an offer?”
“Because I stole your future,” Marduk admitted, “with my careless words. And as much as it pains me to even consider the concept, if there was something there for you with Draco, if you could find the future you desire, then I would not stand in your way again.”
